How do you plan a shoot around golden hour?
Golden hour is when the sun sits between 6° above and 4° below the horizon, and blue hour follows, from 4° to 8° below. Look up both for your location and shoot date, find where the sun sets against your frame, and have the shot lit and rehearsed before the window opens.
A week before the shoot, two of you walk up the ridge with a camera and a thermos. The director wants the last light behind the talent, a long shadow down the slope, the sky going gold.
Today the light is flat and it is eleven in the morning. What matters is where the sun will be at twenty to seven on the day, how long it stays there, and whether the hill behind you takes it away early.
What golden hour actually is
Golden hour is the stretch when the sun is low, from 6° above the horizon down to 4° below it, so it carries on for a while after sunset. The light comes in long and warm, the shadows stretch out, and the sky does a lot of the fill for you. After it comes blue hour, with the sun between 4° and 8° below: no direct sun at all, a cool even sky, and practicals that start to glow in frame.
Different apps draw these edges in slightly different places. The times on this page use the same bands as the Cutvey Meter app, so the call sheet and the phone agree.
It is shorter than you think, and it changes
How long the window lasts depends on how steeply the sun drops, and that depends on where you are and when. Near the equator the sun goes almost straight down and golden hour is over in about forty minutes. Farther north it slides along the horizon, and in London it runs well past an hour. Even in one place it is shortest around the equinoxes and a little longer near the solstices.
How long golden hour lasts
| Place and day | Evening golden hour | Length | Sunset | Sunset bearing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orlando · Mar 20 | 7:06 to 7:51 PM | 45 min | 7:36 PM | W · 271° |
| Orlando · Jun 21 | 7:52 to 8:43 PM | 51 min | 8:26 PM | NW · 297° |
| Orlando · Dec 21 | 4:58 to 5:49 PM | 51 min | 5:33 PM | SW · 244° |
| London · Mar 20 | 5:30 to 6:34 PM | 64 min | 6:13 PM | W · 271° |
| London · Jun 21 | 8:28 to 9:50 PM | 82 min | 9:21 PM | NW · 311° |
| London · Dec 21 | 2:53 to 4:19 PM | 86 min | 3:53 PM | SW · 232° |
| Singapore · Mar 20 | 6:48 to 7:28 PM | 40 min | 7:15 PM | W · 270° |
Local times, worked out with the same solar math and bands as the app: golden hour from 6° above the horizon to 4° below, on a flat horizon.
Look up your day
Type where you are shooting and the date. You get sunrise, sunset, golden hour and blue hour for that day in local time, as lines you can paste straight into the call sheet.
Cutvey Meter · Call sheet · Sun and light
Times for Orlando, FL, in Eastern Daylight Time.
ORLANDO · SAT OCT 17 · SUNRISE 7:27 AM · GOLDEN HOUR 6:22 TO 7:08 PM · SUNSET 6:53 PM · BLUE HOUR 7:08 TO 7:26 PM
MORNING · BLUE HOUR 6:54 TO 7:12 AM · GOLDEN HOUR 7:12 TO 7:58 AM
Times for the place you typed, from a list of towns that comes with this page, or a latitude and longitude you paste in. This page never asks where you are.
Open the sun and golden hour toolScout where the sun sets
The time tells you when. The bearing tells you where, and it moves a lot more than people expect. In Orlando the sun sets far to the northwest in June and well round to the southwest in December. A frame that has the sun behind the talent in summer can have it off to one side by autumn.
Stand where the camera will be. In the app, the SUN screen draws the sun's path over the live view, with hour markers, a compass ribbon and the horizon. Drag the scrubber and the sun walks its path, and you can see the four o'clock light while it is still eleven. Add the shoot day as a tracked date and you can compare it with today on the same screen.
Look at the real horizon while you are there. Sunrise and sunset times assume a flat one, and yours is rarely flat. A ridge, a tree line or a row of buildings to the west ends the direct sun before the sunset time on the sheet, sometimes by half an hour.
Build the day backwards from the light
Golden hour is not the time to work out blocking. Rehearse in the afternoon, set marks, put the bounce and the negative fill where they need to be, and be ready to roll when the window opens. Shoot the frame that matters most first. The light at the start is not the light at the end, and the last ten minutes change faster than any other part of the day.
Plan what happens after the sun goes. Blue hour gives you a second, different look if the scene can hold it, and a warm lamp standing by can stand in for the sun on a close-up once it has dropped behind the hill. Put the times on the call sheet so the AD can count down to them, and check the sky low in the west as well as overhead: a band of cloud there can take the whole thing away.